In the Night Wood. Dale Bailey

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “I hope my book will change that.”

      “Well, you’re in the perfect spot. There must be tons of stuff buried in that old pile.”

      “I’m hoping so.” He hesitated, surveying the rat’s nest of boxes and papers. “I don’t know what your collection —”

      And now Silva North laughed out loud, a rich, throaty laugh, not unkind. “Our collection,” she said. “Is that what brought you to our humble historical society?”

      “I take it you are the society.”

      “In a manner of speaking. The village pays me a modest stipend — all too modest, I’m afraid. And I get to live in the upstairs flat rent-free.”

      “In return for?”

      “In return for going through boxes. I decide what to keep and what’s rubbish. Mr. Sadler, who used to live here, died. Quite a hoarder, he was, with an eye to local history. That must have been twenty years ago. I was a girl. He left the house to the village, and they’ve been shoving boxes in here ever since. I volunteered to clean it out and put it in some order, open it to the public. A deal was struck, and here I am.”

      “But why?”

      “I have about half of a master’s in history from the University of York. And I’m interested in the village’s past. Unfortunately, it has produced no one of any great significance aside from our eccentric author. Strange book. Not quite right for children, is it?” She raised her eyebrows. “No white rabbits checking their watches.”

      “No indeed.” Charles hesitated. “I was hoping that if you ran across anything about Hollow, you’d be willing to share. Have you?”

      “The daguerreotypes, obviously. They were stashed away in a box of Mr. Sadler’s gas bills. God alone knows how they got there. Nothing else so far, I’m afraid.” She studied them. “They’d make splendid plates for your book, wouldn’t they?”

      They would, Charles was about to say, but just then he heard the door open at the end of the hall, the patter of small feet in the corridor. The high, sweet voice of a little girl interrupted them, saying, “Mummy, I’m thirsty.” Charles turned, reeling when he saw the child, maybe five years old, six at the most, with blonde curls and blue jeans and an elfin and expressive face. The earth slid away beneath his feet. Subsidence, old ghosts rising up inside his mind: Lissa, he thought.

      Charles stepped backward, Silva’s hand steadying him as the world came once again into focus: the musty smell of the place and the child in the foyer, the labyrinth of boxes.

      Jesus, was this what Erin —

      “Are you okay?”

      “No, I” — deep breath, tears stinging at the corners of his eyes — “yes, of course, I —”

      No words came.

      Then Silva’s hand was gone. He could still feel its warmth on his back. “Who’s Lissa?”

      Had he said it aloud?

      He shook his head. “My daughter. She’s my daughter.”

      Was, a malicious inner voice put in. Was your daughter.

      “Still back in America?”

      Always and forever, he thought. But all he said was “Yes.”

      “You must miss her very much.”

      “I’m thirsty, Mum.”

      “Just a minute, Lorna.”

      “They look very much alike,” Charles said. “It gave me a shock.”

      “It must have. You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” said Silva. “You need to come upstairs for tea.”

      What he needed was air. “That’s very kind of you,” he said. “I don’t mean to be rude —”

      “You dropped your paper.” She held it out to him as he turned away. The Ripon Gazette, Lissa staring out at him from the front page.

      “Mary Babbing,” Silva said. “Tragic.”

      Steadying himself, he said, “What happened?”

      “No one knows, do they? She just evaporated. You expect things like that to happen in York or London. But not here.”

      “Did you know her?”

      “She was a classmate of Lorna’s.” And then, looking at her daughter, “We shouldn’t —”

      “Of course not.”

      Silva shook her head. “It’s a horrible thing,” she said.

       4

      Charles knew about horrible things. Charles knew about ghosts.

      On the way back to Hollow House, he parked in the turnout by the vine-shrouded pillars, the Eorl Wood looming up around him. He sat there, the car idling, his hands clenched on the wheel. Then he picked up the photograph and tore back the butcher paper Mould had wrapped it in.

      Lissa gazed up at him, once again imprisoned behind her wall of glass. Only she wasn’t, was she? She’d escaped, after all. He’d seen her at the Yarrow Historical Society. He’d seen her in the Ripon Gazette. As if to confirm it, Charles reached for the newspaper in the passenger seat and unfolded it on his lap. He placed the photo beside it: Lissa and this other lost child, Mary Babbing. Who could say what horrors she might have endured?

      A FAMILY’S AGONY, the headline said.

      He leaned his head against the headrest, closed his eyes.

      When he opened them again, he saw a figure in the Eorl Wood.

      It gazed back at him, a green shadow in a green shade. Like a man, but not a man, antlered like a stag in rut. Cernunnos, he thought. The Horned God or King. The avatar of the Night Wood. He stared, breath frozen in his lungs. He blinked. The figure was gone, not there. It had never been there at all.

      Charles shook his head. He put the photograph on the seat beside him, crumpled the newspaper into the space underneath, and eased the car into gear. He accelerated between the pillars and sped into the darkness underneath the trees.

       5

      Hollow House enveloped them.

      As Erin’s ankle healed, she and Charles explored their new home, children in a haunted mansion in a tale: the downstairs rooms, the dining room to the right of the entrance hall, the drawing room to the left. The vast salon with its twin staircases and the adjoining library, accessible by СКАЧАТЬ